


in the red snares

by justbecauseyoubelievesomething



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Aliens, Alternate Universe - Buffy The Vampire Slayer Fusion, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Space, Angst and Tragedy, Characters die, Enemy Lovers, F/M, Forehead Touching, Kissing as a Distraction, Please please please heed the warnings, Reunions, Vampire Hunters, Vampires, but like... space vampires, horribly, so it's worth it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:08:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25367374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justbecauseyoubelievesomething/pseuds/justbecauseyoubelievesomething
Summary: The prevailing theory around the existence of Slayers (her existence) is that a variation of the alien parasite the miners unearthed deep in the Sub Stratum started infecting hosts in order to combat the vampire parasite. Octavia scoffs at the thought. The theory is probably right, especially since Monty is pretty confident in it, but she still hates the whole thing. The Slayer parasite really needs an upgrade in her opinion.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin, Octavia Blake/Lincoln
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8
Collections: Chopped 3.0 Round 2





	in the red snares

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my submission for Round 2 of the Chopped 100 Challenge 3.0!  
> This fic contains the following tropes as part of the challenge:  
> 1\. Based on a TV Show/Movie (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)  
> 2\. Reunion  
> 3\. Kiss to keep cover/keep a secret  
> 4\. Forehead touches
> 
> Songs for this fic:  
> Night on the Sun by Modest Mouse  
> Black Hole Sun by Soundgarden
> 
> I usually don't rec songs with my fics, but these two are perfectly matched with this fic so I wanted to include them!

The dusky red sky of Krasopani casts a deep, bloody glow over the streets of the Lower Stratum, reflecting the second sun as it sinks below the upper crust. Octavia quickens her pace, boots crunching against the gravelly street, braid bouncing briskly against one shoulder. Behind her, the neon lights of bars and seedy motels start to flicker on; gaudy greens and blues mirroring off the metallic walls and roofs of the prefab habitats. Most people gravitate towards the wash of bright colors, ducking hurriedly through the narrow alleyways, but Octavia lets herself melt into the shadows.

Vampires favor the darkness.

She flexes her gloved hands, the armored mesh a bit stiff for her liking. Monty swore by it though and she wasn’t about to contradict him when he got in one of his moods.

She does like the open fingertips. She likes the tactile comfort of running her fingers over the smooth wooden stake strapped to her waist. A slayer’s best friend.

The telltale crunch of a footstep echoes too close behind her and she reacts on pure instinct, throwing herself into an arching back flip. Her extended leg hits a lanky figure hard and he goes down with a muffled grunt and a familiar string of curses as Octavia pulls herself up short.

“Jasper?”

“Hello to you too,” he wheezes from his fetal position.

“What the fuck, Jasper? I could have killed you!”

She reaches for his hand and he obligingly lets her haul him to his feet.

“Don’t you have some sort of slayer tingly sense for when someone  _ isn’t _ a vampire?”

She arches an eyebrow at him. “Slayer tingly sense?”

“You know what I mean!”

She rolls her eyes. “Seriously though, what are you doing here?”

Jasper tilts his chin up indignantly. “Helping you.”

“Helping?” She crosses her arms and makes a show of looking him up and down as he shakes the dirt from his clothes. “Hmm…”

“Shut up.” He leans up against the wall of the building next to her. The red twilight plays along the sharp creases of his face, covering one half of his expression in shadow. “So… any sign of you-know-who?”

Octavia grimaces and turns her attention to the pouch of stun bolts strapped to her hip, suddenly interested in counting them again. Jasper clicks his tongue understandingly and lets the silence linger.

“Go home, Jasper,” Octavia finally breaks the moment. “I’m fine.”

“Not a chance.” She glares at him and he throws up his hands casually. “Hey, it wasn’t just my idea to come out here. Your Watcher isn’t exactly keen on you hunting alone.”

The growl that crawls up her throat is as instinctive as her fighting skills. “He can go to hell.”

Jasper tips his head softly. “He’s just looking out for you.”

“Yeah, well… it’s a little late for that.”

“Right.” Jasper sighs, dragging his toe through the gravel in a swirling pattern. Octavia watches him for a minute, a sort of loneliness bubbling in her chest despite herself.

“Fine. But you know the drill.”

Jasper perks up. “You hunt. You stab. I watch.”

“Yeah.”   
He falls in line behind her as she moves into the next alley. She might give him and Monty shit, but they really are almost as experienced at the hunt as she is, his footsteps blending seamlessly into the sound of her own as they walk. Octavia leads them in a familiar grid through the Lower Stratum, always on the outskirts of the swiftly growing Main Street crowd. It’s a mix of miners and scientific exploration teams, as most of the outer planetary settlements are. Unlike most of the other settlements, Krasopani was sucked dry fairly early on in it’s development leaving nothing but the bare bones of a barely habitable planet, but no shuttles ever came back to retrieve the luckless settlers. No one wants to brave the demons they awakened here, deep below the surface.

Octavia swings herself easily up onto the low roof of a shed and helps Jasper clamber up beside her. They crouch near the edge and swiftly eat a few handfuls of granola and sip stale water from Jasper’s canteen, both of them keeping a weather eye on their surroundings. With only six hours of daylight, Lower is the prime hunting location, for vampires and slayers alike. The ceiling of Mid Stratum soars several thousand feet above their heads, the craggy edges forming a funnel around the small settlement, with just enough opening to see the dark red sky high above the uppermost layer. On the surface, the two suns provide almost constant light, leaving only a few hours of dark reprieve. Octavia visited the Upper Stratum once as a little girl. The soil was coarse and crumbly under her curious hands, falling apart in big chunks over her skirt. She remembers the rusty-golden stains of it lingering for weeks and the smell of it filling her throat and threatening to overwhelm her with the otherness of its being. A world of heat and light and growing things.

She doesn’t plan on ever going back. This is her world. The deepness of the red shadows. The coolness of the underground air across the back of her neck.

The tangy smell of blood.

She wipes crumbs on the sides of her pants and gives Jasper a curt nod.

“Let’s go.”

They scurry along the rooftops, practiced steps light along the wrinkled steel. She leads them in a zigzag across the settlement, doubling back every so often to check the darkest corners. It’s quiet, but she knows all too well how quickly everything can change. So when a soft, but plaintive cry of pain catches her ear, she’s ready. She exchanges knowing glances with Jasper and they sprint to the sound, only a few rooftops over.

Octavia skids to a stop at the edge and takes only half a second to assess. Two vamps; one facing Main Street, no doubt keeping lookout, and the other already drinking from the exposed neck of a teenage boy.

She takes out the drinker first. The crossbow swings easily off her back, the heft of it as familiar as her own two hands. The stun bolt hits the vampire in the neck, sending a visible shock pulse through his body. He lets out a yell as he drops his prey and slumps to the ground, momentarily out of order.

She doesn’t bother stunning the second vamp as she drops to the ground in front of him. His snarl and lunge are expected and she sidesteps him easily, dealing him a heavy backhanded blow as he passes her. He stumbles, giving her a precious second to grab her stake, and as he turns to leap on her in a rage, the wooden point is already in position to drive home through his heart.

As the vampire crumbles and showers her with dust, she hears the wet rasping of the other at her shoulder and she ducks to the left just in time to avoid a bite. Monty’s stun bolts are convenient, but certainly not long lasting. Octavia drops, sweeping one leg out in a half circle to catch the staggering vampire just below his knees. He stumbles backwards and she rolls on top of him, stake poised for the kill. He catches her wrist and for a second they struggle. He’s trapped completely in the feeding frenzy, face contorted into something animal-like, fangs bared and still slippery with blood. It’s a face she never quite gets used to and she wrenches her wrist away from his grip with renewed fervor.

“You can’t stop him!” the vamp hisses frantically.

She shoves the stake forward, relishing the satisfying resistance as it sinks through flesh. The vampire doesn’t even have time to scream before it dissolves into a cloud of grit.

She hoists herself up, the slightest sheen of sweat coating her forehead. Jasper crouches at the boy’s side, helping him hold a wad of cloth to his neck.

“He’ll be okay. The guy barely got a sip out of him.”

Octavia bends down to rest her hand on the boy’s shoulder. His gaze darts to her, still panicked.

“It’s okay. Can you walk?”

“I… I think so?”

“Good. We want you to go straight back to your house, okay? Then stay inside until morning and go to the doctor to get checked out as soon as First Sun is up.”

He bobbles his head and as soon as Jasper helps him to his feet, he takes off at a run, clutching the bandage tightly to his neck.

Jasper gives a half chuckle as he wipes blood from his palms. “So much for thanks, huh?”

Octavia shoves his shoulder, but the attempt is half-hearted at best. “If you didn’t want the job, you shouldn’t have signed up!”

He ducks farther away, just out of her reach and wrinkles his nose cheekily at her. “Well I’m doing it for a pretty girl. What’s your excuse?”

Octavia bites back a snappy remark, refusing to let her good mood dissolve. She glances up at the sky instead, calculating.

“Still a few hours until full dark.” She sheathes her stake and spins away from Jasper, flipping her braid back over her shoulder. “Try to keep up.”

“Well, this is new.”

“Shhh…”

Octavia keeps her focus on the quickly growing cluster of vampires. Even when not in their frenzy, she can sense the stain of their being tainting the air around her. Her ‘slayer tingly sense’ as Jasper put it.

“They’re definitely vamps,” she mutters, toying with her stake.

Jasper glances down at her hand and then back up to meet her stare. “O…”

“I’m not going to do anything stupid,” she hisses. “I’m not a total idiot.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“Yeah, well stop thinking so loudly then.” She peeks her head up slightly again, not enough to give away their perch.

“What do you think it is?”

She keeps her eyes trained on the small crowd, hoping for another glance at their center of attention. An open warehouse sits just behind them, the wide doorway a yawning backdrop of darkness, but they remain just outside instead of retreating into the safety of the building.

“I don’t know.”   
Jasper fiddles with the strap of his backpack nervously. “Well, why don’t we head back to the Greenhouse and we can ask the other guys for help with…”

“Shh!” Octavia slaps her hand over his mouth without thinking, adrenaline rushing through her veins as the vampires part down the middle. One steps forward into the center of their group and starts sweeping his hands up and down the strange artifact. It’s big; taller and wider than any of the vamps standing around it. An orb of some kind, made of a dark bronzy metal. The vampire moves his hand around, pressing random spots on the surface of the orb, while the others seem to watch intently.

“I’m getting a closer look.” She releases Jasper and he makes a show of spitting and gasping silently. She rolls her eyes.

“Stay here.”

“Please don’t get killed,” he groans, as she slips away. She crawls along the edge of the rooftop before dropping cat-like to the ground and pressing up against the wall. She keeps her breathing soft and steady as she reaches the corner closest to the vampires. The street widens just enough between her hiding place and the warehouse that ducking across without being seen is unlikely. Instead, Octavia flattens herself into the wall as much as possible before carefully peering around the corner, only exposing one eye.

The vampires continue to examine the strange orb, occasionally pressing on random spots again and again. Straining her eyes, Octavia finally makes out the dim outlines of letters dotting the surface. Or maybe numbers.

“Get it inside!” The vampire in the middle barks the order suddenly and the rest of the vamps snap into action, swarming around the orb and lifting it together to move into the dark interior.

Octavia presses herself back against the wall again, summoning a deep breath. She gives herself a brief moment to let the tension melt away before heading back up to Jasper.

“Well?”

She frowns, biting at her lip. “Still couldn’t make it out exactly. There are some kind of letters or numbers or something all over the surface of it. It looked like they were trying to input some kind of code.”

Jasper raises his eyebrows expectantly. “So now we head back to the Greenhouse, right? I mean, this isn’t really your forte.”

She groans, but answers by shimmying back to the other side of the building, putting a safer distance between them and the vampires. As Jasper drops to the ground beside her, he bites his lip sheepishly.

Octavia sighs. “What?”

“Nothing. I just… I heard that vampire earlier say something to you. You can’t stop him... or something like that? Do you think this all has something to do with… him?”

Octavia scowls and clenches her stake so tight it hurts. “Forget about it, Jasper. I’ll deal with it.”

But she can’t shake the feeling that he’s right.

It always comes back to him. To Lincoln.

The shuttle up to Mid takes a good hour and by the time Jasper and Octavia stumble into the Greenhouse, Octavia is starting to feel the long night catch up to her. She pushes ahead of a sleepily muttering Jasper, eagerly fantasizing about a hot shower.

A fantasy rudely interrupted as she steps into the foyer and pulls up short at the sight of the blond woman in front of her.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

The older woman takes a step back, startled by Octavia’s sudden appearance.

“Octavia. I’m sorry I didn’t know you were…”

“Leave Clarke alone, O.”

The familiar voice only makes her hackles rise further.

“Bellamy, I told you to keep her out of this.”

Her older brother strides across the room from his office, dark curls slightly tousled as if he’d been sleeping. Propped up against his desk, if the red lines along his cheek are any indication.

“Last I checked, you weren’t the boss of me.” He crosses his arms, eyes stern.

The sleep lines really neutralize the effect.

Clarke starts again. “Octavia… you have to know, I’m so sorry…”

“Shut up.” Her jaw aches and she has to remind herself to unclench her teeth. “Get out.”

“Please, I’m trying…”

“Get. Out.”

Clarke blinks and hurries out, sparing a brief backwards glance for Bellamy. He watches her go and then runs his hand roughly through his hair, making the curls stand up for a moment before flopping every which way.

“Seriously?”

Octavia scoffs at him and brushes past him towards the break room. Or what used to be the break room, back when the Greenhouse was actually a functional farm laboratory. Now it houses thousands of binders full of notes. They spill off the long cafeteria tables and benches and are piled in stacks taller than her head around the perimeter of the room, each one stuffed with delicate papers littered with charts and scientific jargon; most of the original research of the Krasopani science team.

It was Bellamy’s pride and joy. It was Octavia’s worst nightmare.

She makes her way to the far end of the room, where a table has been cleared for a boy her own age and a plate full of sandwiches. He smirks at her as she slides into the seat across from him and she groans.

“You heard all that?”

“You guys are like my own personal soap opera,” he quips, pushing the plate over to her. “Here. I made extra for you. Figured you earned it watching Jasper’s ass out there tonight.”

“Watch it, Monty!” Jasper shouts from the far end of the room where he’s straggling after Bellamy.

“Octavia, we need to talk,” Bellamy growls, quickly bearing down on their dinner table.

She pointedly ignores him, taking a deep bite of her first sandwich and humming in approval.

“Hey, how did the new gloves work out?”

She nods quickly, tearing off another huge bite. “Yeah, they feel great. Is this sausage in here? It’s delicious.”

“O, I mean it.”

Jasper slides in next to Monty and elbows him a couple times. “What, none for me?”

Monty gives him a blank stare. “Oh. Were you hungry?”

Jasper buffets his friend in the back of the head with a scowl. Before Monty can retaliate, Octavia tosses him one of her sandwiches.

“Here. A peace offering.”

“That’s my kind of offering,” Jasper grins.

“Octavia! Look at me!”

“Hey, how are my baby stakes coming?” Octavia asks.

Monty frowns, still rubbing the back of his head. “I’ve told you before, they’re not baby stakes. If I can get the tree farm to consistently reproduce then we can talk about harvesting for lumber. But right now I just can’t risk it.”

“Fine, fine.” She pulls out her stake and lays it on the table with a smirk. “I’ve got Old Faithful here for me anyways.”

“Octavia…”

“Kind of poor planning of the universe to make vampires' biggest weakness a plant that doesn’t even grow here,” she quips.

“Octavia Blake! As your Watcher, I’m commanding you to step into my office. Now!”

Octavia snaps her mouth shut. Monty and Jasper busily refuse to make eye contact with her. Bellamy continues to fume over her shoulder.

She knows when she’s pushed far enough. But she still takes a small pleasure in making far more noise than necessary as she pushes away from the table and stomps into the hall. Bellamy’s office sits on the other side of the foyer, the perfect place for a Watcher to observe any comings and goings. Even though Bell spends most of his time in the break room, his office is still packed floor to ceiling with note binders. Octavia feels another bubble of anger she notes the second chair pulled up to his desk and the extra datapad laid out. She remains standing tapping her foot rhythmically until Bellamy walks in behind her and shuts the door.

“Really, Bell? I mean… really?”

“Oh, don’t start with me,” he snarls, rounding on her. She takes a step back, caught off guard by his intensity. Immediately, the fire goes out of his eyes and he wearily runs his hand down his face.

“I’m… I’m sorry, O. I’m just tired.”

Octavia crosses her arms and tries to summon her fury again. “With what? Your girlfriend wear you out?”

He glares at her, but simply seats himself behind his desk and steeples his fingers in front of him.

Octavia shifts her weight uneasily as his cool silence pushes up against the heat of her temper.

“Bell, you know how I feel about her. About what she did…”

“She’s just trying to help now,” he says softly. “We were up for… hours and hours… still looking for a cure.”

“There’s no cure.” Octavia can’t keep the bitterness out of her tone. “Clarke and her family made sure of that.”

Bellamy finally looks up at her and her walls crumble a little more. He really does look so tired.

“Why are we always fighting, O? You know I’m just trying to do my job.”

She scoffs, halfheartedly. “You know that being a Watcher isn’t even really a job anymore. All those researchers, the people who originally cared about any of this shit, they’re all long dead. You don’t have to pretend like any of this matters…”

“I just want to help!”

His sharp words cut through her tirade and she swallows the rest of her sarcasm.

“I know, big brother.” She moves to stand next to him, letting her hand creep up to his shoulder. The adrenaline of hunting is finally ebbing away and she’s starting to feel too exhausted to continue arguing anyways.

Bellamy runs his fingers over the dark screen of the datapad in front of him. “I think the research is getting somewhere. Vampires don’t have human souls. I still don’t know how the science works, but it’s the only way to explain the… behavior.”

“The complete and total lack of empathy and tendency towards… eating people?” Octavia drones, wryly.

Bellamy winces. “Yes, that.”

“I’m familiar with the whole concept of vampires, strangely enough.”

He winces again. “We’ve… I’ve just been trying to figure out what made Lincoln different.”

Octavia tenses. “We know the story.”

“Yes, but…”

“Clarke’s family wanted revenge. They put an AI in his head that restored his human emotions. He felt guilty. They got what they wanted. And then I messed the whole thing up.”

“No, Octavia. That wasn’t your fault.”

She snatches her hand away as Bellamy reaches for her. The anger is coming back, giving her a burst of energy.

“No? Well it was after I made him happy that the AI crapped out. After I told him…”

She chokes a little on the words and decides to just keep her mouth shut. Bellamy sighs and goes back to playing listlessly with the datapad.

“I just meant that maybe we could reverse engineer something that was specific to Lincoln’s... soul. Clarke’s family doesn’t know how to rebuild the AI, but maybe we just have to reverse the code that’s already in his head…”

Bellamy’s voice trails off and Octavia swipes roughly at the tears pricking at her eyes.

“Forget it, Bell. It’s not worth the trouble.”

He sits up a little straighter. “At least be nicer to Clarke? She really hates that it was her family that did all this. She really just wants to make it right.”

“Whatever. I’ll believe it when I see it.”

He clenches his jaw and looks away. She takes a deep breath, willing her voice not to waver.

“Besides, we have bigger problems to worry about. I found a whole group of vamps hiding some sort of giant orb.”

His eyes light up a little at the mention of a new problem. Bellamy might not have the Slayer DNA, but the bloodlust of chasing after a challenge is embedded in Blake genetics. “A giant orb?”

“Yeah. It looked like it was made out of some kind of metal. A dark orangey color. Probably fresh from Sub, if I had to guess. And it was covered in… symbols?”

“Symbols?”

She shrugs. “I couldn’t get close enough to see if they were letters or numbers or whatever. But the vampires tried to press a few combinations and nothing seemed to happen.” She reached across him to tap on the datapad and pull up a map of Lower Stratum. “They stuck it in an old warehouse right over here.”

Bellamy’s brow furrowed as Octavia leaned back. “For some reason that sounds familiar, but I’ll have to consult the records.”

“Let me know what you find.” She stretches lazily. “I’m going to take a shower.”

“O…”

She turns back in the doorway. Bellamy’s look is filled with pity. She hates it.

“Spit it out.”

“Do you think Lincoln is involved? He’s been stirring up trouble for you ever since he turned.”

“Yeah,” she whispers. Lincoln’s face flashes in her mind’s eye and she shakes it away, eyes suddenly watery again.

“How do you know?”

“Call it a gut feeling,” she mutters. “Good night, big brother.”

Three days of patrol and not a sign of movement near the mysterious warehouse. There are fewer vampire sightings all over Lower and it grates on Octavia’s nerves. Something is brewing, coiling tighter and tighter, almost ready to spring.

She runs her gaze over the quiver of stun bolts again, even though the number is already embedded in her head. She carefully pulls out her three wooden tipped bolts from their special lining along the side of her quiver and admires the sheen of the finely polished wood. Monty was adamant that they not waste precious wood on crossbow bolts, so these were his compromise. Just in case she absolutely needs to make a kill shot. She’s still not positive Monty won’t kill her afterwards anyways though.

With a huff, she rewraps her gear and hoists herself up onto a rooftop. Bellamy has both Monty and Jasper on research duty tonight which means she’s hunting alone, something she doesn’t mind in the slightest. Without a partner, she can run faster, leap farther, kill faster; flexing her enhanced strength and agility for all they’re worth.

The prevailing theory around the existence of Slayers (her existence) is that a variation of the alien parasite the miners unearthed deep in the Sub Stratum started infecting hosts in order to combat the vampire parasite. Octavia scoffs at the thought. The theory is probably right, especially since Monty is pretty confident in it, but she still hates the whole thing. The Slayer parasite really needs an upgrade in her opinion. The vampire parasite spreads like wildfire. The Slayer only moves on when its current host is dead.

Octavia sets her lips in a thin line and lets the grim reminder sink home. Sometimes it’s good to remember she walks on a knife’s edge. Bellamy might think she’s too lackadaisical about her job, but it’s a thin shield over her all too dark reality. She idly wonders if the front is to protect herself or her brother.

As she expects, there’s no one at the warehouse, not even a guard. She slumps down in her usual hiding place with a groan. Despite her instincts screaming at her to just wait and watch, she itches to run over and slip inside, to examine the orb up close. But years of training remind her that vampire guards don’t linger outside anyways. They’d be just inside the doors, waiting to welcome anyone who went snooping.

Octavia settles in to keep watch for a few hours and tries not to let her thoughts spiral too far into the dark. As usual, Lincoln’s face is near the top of her memories, so she tears her mind away and tries to think ahead instead. Bellamy and Clarke are still spending long hours together in his office and Octavia is starting to think her “girlfriend” comment wasn’t far off. She tries to imagine Bellamy with Clarke by his side. Clarke as part of the Slayer’s team. Clarke sleeping in the dorms at the Greenhouse.

It gives her a brief shudder of disgust, but she’s surprised to realize her usual accompanying anger isn’t as quick to follow. The Griffin family might be responsible for the AI in Lincoln’s head, but it wasn’t Clarke personally who put it there. And she really is trying to help.

Octavia scowls at her simpering thoughts.

Anger is simpler. Anger is clean. Helpful. She doesn’t know what to do with regret or empathy.

Maybe she really is just another alien.

Movement catches the corner of her eye and she focuses back on the warehouse, half expecting it to be dust stirred up by the ever crumbling stratum levels. Instead it’s a man, approaching the open doors with fast, sure strides. His dark skin is criss crossed by darker tattoos. They crawl up from the collar of his shirt, adorning the sides of his neck and the back of his shaven head. His thin shirt is stretched tightly over the thick muscles of his chest and shoulders. Everything about him, even the way he walks, is so familiar that Octavia doesn’t have to see his face to know who it is.

Her heart slams painfully into her ribcage.

“Lincoln.”

She whips her hand over her mouth, as if her soft whisper could be enough to summon him to her hiding place. But he doesn’t pause. He slips between the warehouse doors into the dark and Octavia slowly lets out her breath.

Lincoln is here. Whatever the orb is for, he’s the one behind it.

Unless she stops him.

Something goes numb inside her as she steadies her crossbow and carefully pulls out one of her lethal bolts. The wood-tipped shaft looks flimsy against the bulky bow, but she knows it’s more than enough. He would be dead before he even realized he’d been shot.

She breathes out again, a long, steady stream of air, as she aims at the doors.

She can do it. She can finally put her demon to rest. The long months of wondering and waiting and suffering. The nightmares and somehow even worse, the good dreams, can begin to fade. She just needs to pull the trigger.

It feels like an eternity before Lincoln steps outside again, directly into her sightline.

Now she can see his face; deep set eyes under his strong brow, nose and cheeks like chiseled granite. How many times did she run her fingers gently across that brow? How many times did she press light kisses against those lips?

She tries to gather herself, but she’s spiraling now.

She remembers the first time she saw Lincoln, the way the weight of the world was evident on his shoulders. The guilt of hundreds of deaths running through his mind over and over.

She remembers the first time she kissed him, letting him draw her close to his chest, trusting him as he kissed down her bare throat. The thrill of knowing his restraint with her.

She remembers it all. Every detail. It washes over her in a wave of love and warmth and sadness and it’s too much, too much...

Her hands are shaking. The tip of her bolt lowers slowly until it’s resting on the rooftop and Lincoln melts away into the shadowy streets once more.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Octavia punches the training dummy again, so hard that it rattles the stand and threatens to tip over.

Jasper and Monty exchange glances and she resists the urge to punch them next.

“Seriously, guys. I’m good.”

“Yeah, of course,” Monty finally chirps, unconvincingly.

Jasper only rolls his eyes and turns back to scanning notes.

Octavia jumps back a step before throwing herself into a front flip that ends with a flurry of kicks to the dummy.

“If you break that, I’m making you build a new one this time.”

She wipes a sweat-soaked strand of hair from the side of her neck and frowns at Bellamy.

“Isn’t that the Watcher’s job?”

“I supervise the Slayer and research aliens. I don’t have to provide training dummies.”

She tilts her head at him as he seats himself at the nearest table.

“You seem awfully smug.”

“Well, I did manage to figure out what this orb is,” he chuckles.

Jasper slams his binder shut. “You couldn’t have led with that? My eyes are already crossed enough!”

“Yeah and those two extra seconds of reading really made the difference,” Monty mocks.

“Shut up, guys,” Bellamy groans. “I found the orb. It’s native Krasopanian. You were right, O. It was buried on the Sub Stratum. Apparently, a mining team tried to remove it in the early days, but ended up reburying it only a few days later.”

“Suspicious,” Octavia says, curiosity getting the better of her as she walks away from her dummy.

“Very. There’s only some obscure notes on the thing, but it sounds like it was covered in symbols that aren’t… well... they aren’t human.”

“It belongs to the aliens then?” Jasper pipes up.

“But the vampires didn’t know how to use it either,” Octavia points out. “Remember? They tried different combinations and nothing happened.”

“Right. But… in the notes it looks like some of the original science team had a chance to go check it out before they reburied it.” Bellamy flips on his datapad and squints at it. “Apparently it emits incredible radiation frequencies. Like, off the charts. Only comparable to…”

He trails off. Everyone waits patiently for a few seconds.

“Comparable to what?” Monty finally prompts.

Bellamy shakes his head slightly. “It doesn’t make sense, but it’s comparable to a black hole.”

A sinking feeling swallows Octavia’s stomach and she struggles to breathe.

“But… what does that…?”

“It opens one.”

They turn to her as one.

“What did you say,” Bellamy asks.

She swallows hard. “It… it opens one. A black hole.”

“How do you…”

“Lincoln told me.”

A beat of silence.

Bellamy’s gaze hardens as he leans forward. “He told you about this? When?”

She taps her fingers nervously against her thigh. “He didn’t tell me about it specifically. But he used to mention things. Vaguely. I know there was a weapon the vampires were looking for. Something to…” She searches for the words. “To ‘swallow the world and everything in it’.”

Monty looks slightly green. Jasper’s stare is blank. Only Bellamy moves as he starts tapping at his datapad again. “Fascinating.”

“Right. Fascinating,” Octavia laughs bitterly. “So glad my ex boyfriend is getting ready to open up a black hole.”

“We can… can stop it, right? Like… plug the hole?” Monty stutters.

Bellamy runs his hand through his hair. “I’ll figure it out. First of all, it seems like Lincoln doesn’t have the correct key code to open the orb yet. So we have time.”

“Hooray for that,” Jasper mumbles.

Octavia grabs at her head, temples pounding. “I should have killed him. I should have... I had him in my sight.”

“Hey.” Bellamy grabs her arms and lowers them. His hands are firm and warm against her elbows as he looks her in the eye. “We’re going to be okay. This isn’t your fault. I promise.”

Her head is buzzing as he steps back, but she nods slightly.

Bellamy sets his jaw. “Alright then. Let’s get back to work.”

“O! O!”

Bellamy’s rough voice rouses her from a fitful sleep straight into panicked awareness. She’s grabbing for the stake at her belt before he can grasp her wrist reassuringly.

“Hey, it’s me.”

“Bell.” Octavia slumps back against the table, realizing with a groan that she fell asleep against a pile of research notes. Her neck twinges slightly with pain as she rolls it back and forth.

“I have good news!” He’s almost bouncing up and down. Far too cheerful for someone who just spent upwards of twelve hours locked in his own office surrounded by papers.

Octavia moans in disagreement and tries to hide her face in her arms again, but Bellamy tugs at her hand.

“Clarke figured it out.”

“Clarke… what?”

“How to reverse engineer the AI. She’s pretty sure it will work!” he beams. “We can send the reset code remotely to the AI and it should be able to reconnect with Lincoln’s brain.”

“So he…?”

“Can get his soul back.” Bellamy grins. “So to speak.”

Octavia feels a flash of hope. So warm and bright that it’s too good to be true. She tightens her grip on Bellamy’s hand, willing him to give her strength.

“Bell… you’re sure?”

He kneels so he can look her straight in the eye, grasp tightening in promise. “I’m one hundred percent sure.”

She swallows the lump in her throat and lets him pull her to her feet. “Clarke is running tests at her house. She wants us to come now so we can send the code out.”

“Okay.” Octavia follows Bellamy numbly, letting her feet move automatically. It feels like a dream, like she’s walking through a shroud of fog.

Hope blossoms slowly in her chest and she basks in the feeling. Lincoln will be back. She can finally hold him. Feel his arms around her.

No more black hole. No more nightmares.

Out of habit, she grips the handle of her stake as they wind through Mid towards Clarke’s house. The Griffin house is prominent for a prefab, mostly because of the built-in labs jutting like ugly wings off each side of the main house. The original head of the science team and sponsor of the Krasopani expedition lived in this house some two hundred years ago. His family helped awaken the vampire parasite. His family built an AI to torture Lincoln with his own guilt for eternity. And now his family is going to save Lincoln’s soul.

“Clarke?” Bellamy calls cautiously as they let themselves in the front door.

Octavia wrinkles her nose as her gaze darts over the bundle of blooming deep flowers tied with a ribbon on the table.

“I didn’t know this was going to be a date.”

Bellamy flushes bright red, obvious even in the dim light of the house. “It… it wasn’t. I mean… I didn’t think..”

Octavia rests her hand against his arm softly. “It’s okay, Bell. I… I think she’s good for you.”

He blinks. “You do?”

“Yeah.” Octavia takes a deep breath and gives him a wan smile. “Just um… maybe no making out while I’m in the room, huh?”

He chuckles nervously and threads his fingers through her own. “I can promise that. For now, let’s just save Lincoln.”

Octavia shakes her head and points past him at the floor. “Clarke might have other ideas.”

A thin trail of deep flower petals, still glowing a faint silver, leads down the hall towards the computer lab. Bellamy ducks his head in embarrassment, but resolutely follows the petals.

“She definitely asked for you to come over too. It’s just a joke or something. Don’t worry about it.”

Despite the butterflies in her stomach, Octavia can’t help but smirk at Bellamy’s stuttering.

“You know I’m going to hold this over your head forever, right?”

He groans as the petal trail turns and ends at a door near the end of the hall. Octavia raises an eyebrow.

“Isn’t the computer lab like… all the way down the hall?”

The tips of Bellamy’s ears are flaming red. “This is… this is Clarke’s bedroom.”

“Oh for crying out loud,” Octavia snaps at him. She reaches past him and flings the door open.

Behind her Bellamy’s breath catches in his throat and Octavia freezes as her eyes adjust to the scene in front of her. Clarke lies perfectly still on her bed. The trail of silver petals trickles up to meet the tips of her fingers where her left arm dangles over the edge of the mattress. Pressed in her other hand against her chest and stained in deep nightmarish red is a single flower, slowly wilting. Her eyes stare unseeing at the ceiling.

The rusty smell of blood hits Octavia a split second later and she chokes. With the back of her hand pressed to her nose she takes a shaky step forward. The hole in the side of Clarke’s neck is gaping for vampire standards and the way the blood is pooled along the front of her throat and down her chest indicates more wounds hidden under her blouse. But the rough words stained in her pillowcase alongside her pale cheek leave Octavia no doubts as to who arranged the grim array.

Behind her Bellamy makes a sound between a groan and a sob and she hears his knees hit the floor with a thud.

Octavia feels a chill creep over her, starting behind her eyes and slowly encasing her all the way to her toes. She brushes Clarke’s eyelids closed with a steady hand. The bloody words taunt her and she looks away even as they echo in Lincoln’s voice in her memory.

“I miss you, lover.”

Time to end this.

“You don’t have to do this,” Monty says softly. Octavia tightens the wrists of her gloves without meeting his eyes.

“You know I do.”

“We can still try Clarke’s reset code. Jasper found it all saved on her hard drives. I didn’t write it, but I can figure out how to send it and Lincoln can…”

“I can’t risk it, Monty,” she cuts him off. She stands and rolls her neck, savoring the slight pop. “I could have killed him a few weeks ago and I didn’t. Clarke’s death is on me.”

“That’s not…”

“It is true!” Octavia reins herself in with a deep breath. “It is true and we all know it.”

Monty’s eyes are full of sympathy, but he doesn’t argue.

“You really think the… the… words… you think that was a message for you?”

“It means he wants to meet.” Finally. Maybe Lincoln is as eager to face his demons as Octavia is.

“Don’t you think it’s probably a trap then?”

She flashes a wry grin. “Undoubtedly.”

Monty sways back and forth, worrying at his lip with his teeth. “Look… I really, really would like it if you didn’t die. So I’m still going to see if I can figure out that code. It’s better than not doing anything.”

Octavia reaches out for his shoulders and holds him steady. “I appreciate it Monty, but I need you to help Jasper look after Bell. He’s… he needs you guys right now.”

“He needs you too.”

Octavia gives him one last squeeze and then pulls away. “He needs me to make it right. That’s all I can do right now. For him and for Clarke.”

The warehouse is humming. She hears it as soon as she steps through the doors.

The floor is worn smooth after years of equipment being slid in and out and Octavia’s boots barely make a whisper with each step. She keeps her crossbow steadied against one forearm, stun bolt loaded and finger resting lightly on the trigger.

Her eyes adjust to the darkness enough to make out the orb, sitting in the exact center of the open floor. As she draws close to the giant artifact, she realizes the humming is coming from the orb itself. Up close she can see that the symbols are definitely alien. And they’re glowing with a faint green light.

Even under her icy calm, her heart stutters. “He turned it on.”

“Yes, I did.”

Octavia whirls around and her breath catches in her throat. Lincoln faces her alone. For just a second, she’s thrown back in time and it’s just the face of the man she loves. Then Lincoln smiles and the way his lip curls is all wrong and the illusion shatters.

He chuckles lowly. “Hello, lover.”

She lets loose her stun bolt, but he anticipates and dodges to the side easily. She curses and fumbles for another bolt as he laughs again.

“I’d hoped for a warmer welcome than that!” Lincoln spreads his arms wide as if to invite her in for a hug. She takes a step back, increasingly conscious of the humming orb at her back.

Lincoln drops his arms and frowns thoughtfully. “Of course, the last time I saw you, you were crying like a little girl. So I guess my standards are still too high.”

Octavia swallows thickly and lays another bolt along the bow, but Lincoln is already moving. He darts forward and knocks the bow from her hands.

“Do you like my little project?” He grins, fangs gleaming in the sickly, green glow. “I’m sick of all this Slayer and vampire back and forth. Best to just wipe out the whole thing, huh?”

Octavia ducks away, whipping out her stake.

“Wait, you’re seriously going to kill me?” Lincoln clasps his hands to his chest mockingly. “I’m heartbroken.”

“Shut up,” she screams. The memories are pushed away by the blinding white anger. Now it’s Clarke’s face that flashes through her mind. Bellamy’s inhuman sobs. The pain bursts through her heart like a flood and Octavia throws herself forward.

Lincoln is ready. They’ve sparred dozens of times and it’s almost comforting that it’s come down to this. She lunges and he parries, his forearm deflecting her wrist. She swings her leg around in a low kick, but he jumps over her foot, anticipating the move. He doesn’t pause to give her a breath, but immediately swings in with his own flurry of punches and she instinctively rolls to the side, muscle memory taking control. Her feet hit the ground and she’s square in her fighting stance again. Lincoln grins and they go again.

Their blows take them in a half circle around the humming orb. Octavia’s hair stands on end as they dance closer and closer, the green light slowly sending brighter ripples across the dark warehouse. There has to be a way to stop it.

She has her back to the orb when she feels a shift, almost like the air is sucked entirely from the room. A look between awe and horror crosses Lincoln’s face and she seizes the opportunity to flip him over her head. He hits the ground flat on his back and she hears the pained grunt as his ribs crack. She spins to straddle him with her stake raised high.

The black hole is opening. The room is distorted, green streaks of light wavering across the shadowy corners of the warehouse. In the center of the orb, a small void is growing. A hole of absolute darkness.

Everything around them is stretched, pulling towards the void, as if someone was yanking on the edge of their world, sweeping it away like a dirty sheet.

Octavia fights the pull, ignoring the way her own hands are beginning to distort before her eyes. How to stop it? How to stop it?

A hole needs a plug. Right?

At the very least, it’s a fitting end for the man who ruined her life.

Lincoln is still stunned as she hauls him up by his collar. His gaze flits over her face as she drags him closer to the orb.

“Octavia?”

Octavia firms her jaw and shoves Lincoln in front of her. The edges of the black hole hungrily flicker behind him, but for just a moment it doesn’t grow. Like it’s waiting for her. Like the world is holding its breath.

Then she meets his eyes and his utter look of confusion and loss cuts straight to her heart.

“Octavia? What’s going on?”

The lines of his face are relaxed now, eyelids fluttering slightly as if he’s just waking up.

The stake dangles limply from her hand as she searches his face, hope and fear tangling in her throat.

“Lincoln?”

The corner of his mouth twitches at her voice, but he doesn’t quite smile, still fighting through some sort of fog.

“What… what happened?”

Her mouth is bone dry. Green light glistens off the sweat on her forearms as she tightens her grip.

“You… you don’t remember?”

“I…” His brow wrinkles painfully. “No. I was with you and you said… you said…”

“I love you,” she whispers. The last thing he remembers. Her heart flutters slowly and then starts racing frantically.

Monty’s code. Clarke’s code. It works.

Octavia runs her palm down the plane of Lincoln’s cheek and lets it rest against his jaw. She feels the slight tremble as he swallows and reaches up to press his own hand over her’s.

“What’s going on?”

The black hole flickers faster behind him, hungry and gaping, a wound in the fabric of the universe. She drops her stake, letting it roll across the warped floor.

“Just look at me,” she whispers. “Keep looking at me.”

“Wha…?”

She kisses him, softly at first as she swallows Lincoln’s confusion, but then pressing harder, more demanding. Chasing her last chance at happiness. At saying goodbye. He slowly responds, tilting into her kiss and letting her taste him. She brings her other hand up to grip the back of his neck, fingers splayed across his tattoos. Her tears run down both of their faces and it’s a mess, it’s all a mess.

Two aliens stealing a moment of humanity. Just a moment.

She slowly pulls back and presses her forehead against Lincoln’s. For a moment their breaths mingle in the space between them. Octavia stifles the sob that tries to push its way out of her chest.

“I love you,” she whispers again and Lincoln’s eyelids flutter again as he searches her eyes.

“I love you too,” he murmurs softly and he gently brushes his fingers along the lines of her cheeks, wiping away the tears. It’s the most reassurance he can give her in this moment and she takes it. He trusts her. He loves her.

It has to be enough.

The black hole flickers angrily and she knows she’s out of time.

Plug the hole.

She puts both hands against Lincoln’s heart and shoves.

He stumbles back, still unsteady and confused. One step. Two steps.

The void seems to suck him in slowly, like it's drinking him through a straw. There’s no pain on his face, but his expression warps and elongates even as his dark gaze stays locked on Octavia. His body combines with the darkness, melting together into a mix of light and shadows, swirling into unrecognizable shapes and forms. Octavia takes a step back as the green light strengthens suddenly, the orb shining like a golden sun. She throws her arm up over her eyes as the orb sends out one last pulse of white-hot light.

The humming cuts off abruptly. Octavia slowly lowers her arm, blinking away the leftover imprint of glowing symbols. The orb is dark. The hole is gone. All that remains is a strange rippling across the ground where the black hole tried to pull the planet in.

Lincoln is gone.

Octavia crumples to the ground. She runs her fingers over her lips, still tasting him. Gathering the taste, the feel of his hands, the memory of his face into the hollow of her chest and willing it to die. It feels like a long time before she stops shaking and she crawls closer to the orb. She runs her hand along the metallic surface, glossy and slightly warm. She lays her palm flat against it and presses hard enough for the raised symbols to cut her skin, relishing the reality of pain.

“Goodbye.”

Octavia cuts through the night like a spectre. She’s slain more vampires in the past three months than in her whole time as a Slayer. The bloodlust is something she can’t explain, doesn’t try to explain, but her friends still give her pitying glances from afar. As if they can actually understand.

Monty acts guilty, but also can’t hide his pride over successfully inputting the reset code. And she can’t begrudge him that. Jasper thinks she needs to let the whole thing go and move on, but he wasn’t there. He didn’t make the call that sent Lincoln spiraling into a void of nothingness.

Bellamy tries to come up with far fetched theories sometimes. Theories about how maybe the orb is simply a portal to other dimensions or universes. The black hole might not destroy, but merely transport. Octavia nods along with him out of kindness because she knows how much his own wounds still bleed, the ache of Clarke’s absence something that can’t be healed. And if she privately feels like maybe he’s somehow right, that Lincoln is still alive somewhere, always looking for a way back to her, that’s something she prefers to keep to herself. A hope that stays buried deep in the dark, with no chance to grow.

She hunts alone because she can give herself into the bloodlust completely, tearing through vampire nests like a finely honed blade, reveling in her own ability to sow chaos and fear. And sometimes she hunts alone because on the quiet nights, her tears are just a little too close to the surface, her pain just a little too present.

Tonight her wandering steps take her back to the warehouse, feet growing heavier as she draws closer. The pain claws at her throat and she stands in the doorway between the darkness inside and the red twilight outside and lets it gnaw at her.

Sometimes you just have to feel everything. Just feel human for a few minutes.

Octavia counts to one hundred, takes a deep breath and turns to leave.

“Wait.”

There’s an echo of footsteps behind her and she stops breathing, frozen in anticipation as they draw nearer.

Then the familiar voice sounds out softly again and the seed of hope bursts forth into something alive.

“Octavia?”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! If you liked my fic, please consider voting for it in this round of the Chopped 100 Challenge! [ Vote here!](https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/WQ9BNFS)
> 
> Title taken from "Venus in Furs" by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch.


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